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Trump & Republicans on Their Own to Protect America From Russian Nuclear Threats

Democrats endlessly bray about Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 elections threatening democracy. Yet they hypocritically ignore Moscow’s threats against the U.S. by a new generation of nuclear super-weapons.

They even oppose President Trump’s modernization of U.S. nuclear and conventional forces to deter Russia!

My report "Poseidon: Russia’s New Doomsday Machine" (Amazon.com) describes one of Russia’s new super-weapons that could drown U.S. coastal cities in a radioactive tsunami, destroy U.S. aircraft carriers and submarines, and make an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack — thus winning World War III.

But Democrats care about none of this.

So President Trump and congressional Republicans are on their own to protect America from unprecedented Russian nuclear threats:

President Trump should sign the draft executive order submitted to President Obama by the Congressional EMP Commission, but ignored for eight years. The EMP Commission’s long-neglected recommendations to protect the electric power grid and other life-sustaining critical infrastructures should be implemented on a crash emergency basis.

EMP protecting electric grids and other critical infrastructures could be quickly accomplished as part of President Trump’s plan for critical infrastructure modernization.

The national electric grid could be EMP hardened in a few years for about $2 billion. Much could be accomplished in 6 months.

Revive President Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and deploy on an emergency basis Brilliant Pebbles space-based defenses that can intercept hundreds of missiles during boost-phase, midcourse, and re-entry phase. President Clinton canceled SDI and Brilliant Pebbles for ideological reasons to preserve the principle of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

Ambassador Henry Cooper, former Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative, estimates Brilliant Pebbles, if given high priority, could be deployed during President Trump’s second term. Cost — $10-20 billion.

SDI’s Brilliant Pebbles— combined with EMP protection of U.S. critical infrastructures— could render nuclear missiles obsolete, work a revolution in military technology shifting advantage from offense to defense, thereby stabilizing the strategic balance and replacing MAD with a new principle—call it Strategic Assured National Existence (SANE).

Killing nuclear missiles instead of enemy populations, defending the American people from nuclear EMP and other effects instead of avenging our dead, is more consistent with the Judeo-Christian values of Western Civilization. Strategically and politically SANE is a more credible and practical solution than MAD to the challenge of doomsday machines like: Poseidon.

Nonetheless, as long as nuclear missiles and bombers exist, the U.S. must continue to modernize strategic offensive nuclear forces to deter and defeat all possible adversaries. U.S. modernization should include new advanced generation nuclear weapons—including Super-EMP nuclear weapons. The $700 billion dollar price tag for modernizing MAD should not leave the U.S. technologically inferior to Russia in any category of nuclear offensive capabilities.

Poseidon should be preemptively destroyed if deployed on operational patrols off U.S. coasts or to trail U.S. submarines and aircraft carriers. Moscow should be warned that Washington will not tolerate an autonomous artificially intelligent doomsday machine roaming U.S. coastal waters or the world’s oceans.

Strangely, those who would “poke the bear” over issues merely tangential to U.S. interests are silently complacent about existential threats to America — like EMP attack and Poseidon.

Dr. Henry Kissinger, in "How The Enlightenment Ends" (Atlantic, June 2018), warns civilization may be threatened by failure of governments to comprehend the potential dangers of Artificial Intelligence (AI), over-eager to exploit AI for defense, "Science fiction has imagined scenarios of AI turning on its creators. More likely is the danger that AI will misinterpret human instructions . . . "

Almost before the ink from Kissinger’s pen is dry, Moscow is testing its Poseidon robot to deliver a 100-megaton bomb.

The combination of nuclear super-weapons and Artificial Intelligence is an unprecedented new threat that eclipses the invention of the atomic bomb — and that perhaps will end not only the Enlightenment, but mankind.

President Trump and the U.S. Navy can veto Russia’s planned Poseidon.escalation of Mutual Assured Destruction. We can and should veto MAD itself with SANE.

Saying "No" to Moscow—and if necessary sinking Poseidon — could be the beginning of the end of the new Cold War.

Russia respects strength. Weakness invites Russian aggression.

America and Russia are no longer irreconcilable ideological adversaries. But we are in a new Cold War against Russia-China-North Korea-Iran.

Deterring and reconciling Russia would split the new Axis and win the new Cold War. While China may be the greater threat in the long run — Moscow’s opportunity to be a nuclear Napoleon is now.

In sum, the U.S. should quickly EMP harden critical infrastructures, deploy space-based missile defenses, modernize strategic forces including new generation nuclear weapons, and sink Poseidon if deployed to autonomously patrol the oceans as an artificially intelligent doomsday machine.

These acts of strength are necessary preconditions for a New Détente and real strategic partnership with Russia, as should have resulted from the end of the old Cold War.

Dr. Peter Vincent Pry is executive director of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security. He served on the Congressional EMP Commission as chief of staff, the Congressional Strategic Posture Commission, the House Armed Services Committee, and the CIA. He is author of "Blackout Wars." For more of his reports,